Ross Perot on Welfare & Poverty

1992 & 1996 Reform Party Nominee for President

Get business & churches involved with schools

Sometimes crime and drug and alcohol are the dead ends for parents and students who have no hope, who have given up. We must give them hope, which can come in the form of increased cooperation between schools and businesses. For example,
the School-to-Work program should be expanded.

We should persuade religious groups and community organizations to enlist volunteers to work one-on-one with students who need help and who need to know that someone cares about them.

Source: The Dollar Crisis, p.131
, Jul 2, 1996

Transform welfare recipients to productive citizens

A shocking 24% of our children live in poverty. No other western industrialized nation has a poverty rate anywhere close to that stunning figure. This is more than ten times the rate of some nations. This 24% statistic is not an act of God but the result
of flawed policy.

Education is part of the answer. Determining how people can be transformed into productive citizens, despite severe skill limitations, must be part of that equation. The nation did it with the Works Progress Administration half a
century ago. It would certainly seem that creative, sensitive people of today should be able to find more sensible answers than putting people onto the welfare rolls.

People who are simply handed a check for doing
nothing are robbed of pride. They do not have the inner satisfaction that comes with contributing something of themselves to society. They have no infrastructure that tells them their existence is meaningful.

21% child poverty rate is unacceptable

We are blessed with many natural resources in this country. But the most precious resource of all is our children. Their welfare is the rightful objective of many of the programs on which we spend so much money--namely education and health care.
So why don't we see better results? For one reason, it's the environment in which these children live.

In 1970, 14% of our children lived in poverty. Today we have 21% of our children living in poverty. We will never be able to solve the dropout and
discipline problems in our schools until we can get our children into a solution where they have at least some kind of minimum standard of supervision and attention at home.

A 21% child poverty rate in the greatest country in the history of man is
unthinkable. A 21% child poverty rate in a country whose alabaster cities are supposed to gleam undimmed by human tears is absolutely unacceptable. This statistic is another alarming indicator of where an improperly managed government has taken us.

Massive redistribution from wealthy to poor

How would government use this newly centralized economic power? By socialistically redistributing wealth. According to Michael Kinsley:

“H. Ross Perot is widely considered to be an archetypal Texas right-wing kook.
Yet he is prepared to endorse strongly redistributionist policies. Even more startling, he is willing to promote them with rhetoric no leading Democrat would dare to indulge in for fear of being dismissed as hopelessly out of tune with the times.
Even leftist politicians rarely say as clearly as Perot does that what they have in mind is taking money from you and giving it to someone else. he urges a massive new transfer program designed to take money from the prosperous
and use it for the benefit of the poor. The banner under which he proclaims all this was nothing less than equalization.“

There are many issues that Perot is unclear on. This is not one of them.